Chapter 4: of Magic Growth: Silent Night

"So, the one you want to save is your little sister?"

"Yes, she is one year younger than me. We were exiled from our home and ended up at this place together."

Karen's face distorted as if she was in pain. Probably. The dirt was still going strong and most of her facial expressions remained a mystery. The sun was now hitting the horizon and the resulting lack in sunlight was making it only harder. Some light would have been nice.

Karen seemingly noticed as well.

"Let us first make a fire before we continue with our talk," she suggested.

We piled up all the twigs in our immediate surroundings and made a small pile next to it as well. I hoped we would find back to the camping spot later.

Some minutes later we had a campfire, without the fire. And it was now pretty much dark. It wasn't so dark that you could see absolutely nothing, courtesy to the moon, but it was impossible to see further than a few meters.

"So, how do we make the actual fire?"

"With a fire stone? How else?"

"What is a fire stone?"

"Yumi, have you never camped outside?"

Of course, I didn't. At the very least not in this world. And it didn't look like she meant a flintstone either.

"No, I didn't."

"Your survival becomes a bigger mystery every minute."

Karen took her pouch and took out a small red stone. That was the same pouch where the food was stored in, but I never noticed that stone.

"This is a fire stone. If you insert mana it becomes really hot."

"A magic lighter, huh. But, can you even insert mana without being able to sense it?"

"Pretty much everyone can learn to do that rather easily. As long as you have some kind of image of mana entering the stone you can do it with little practice. Of course, if you can sense mana it is even easier. Want to give it a try?"

With a nod, I took the fire stone. How did this work now? Since I was able to sense mana it should be easy, right? I concentrated and imagined the mana entering the stone. And then...

Nothing happened.

Did I imagine it wrong? I tried again, but alas, it failed another time. I tried imagining a few more things but none of them worked.

The way I imagine it... Maybe I need some kind of pose, like how magicians in movies do it?

"Yumi?"

"It's not working yet. But I won't give up so easily," I declared.

I stood up. I stood up and assumed a pose, holding the fire stone in front of me.

I know you can do it! Come, fire!"

Silence.

I tried a different pose but still nothing. After a number of poses, each one enough to make teenager with a certain kind of illness jealous, Karen called out to me with a strained smile.

"Uhm... Yumi? How... How about something you are already familiar with doing? As a monster, there's surely a few things you can do, right?"

Familiar, huh? I was able to transform my arms and change my eyes, but rather than saying I imagined it I... actually how did I do that?

I thought for a moment and decided to just test it out. Changing my eyes' pupils I tried to get a feel for it. Rather than an image, it felt more like I was pushing a part of my body.

I think I can do this. That was actually a good idea, thanks, Karen.

Directing my gaze to the stone again I tried copying what I did with my eyes, pushing the 'part' of my body into the stone.

Flash!

"MY EYES! IT HURTS! IT'S HOT!"

I screamed. I didn't know what exactly happened outside of my vision turning white, but I knew the results of it. My face was hot and it hurt incredibly. As if someone poured hot water on it.

"Yumi! Stop thrashing, everything is okay."

Amidst my screams of pain, I heard Karen trying to calm me down. I felt her grabbing my arms so I wouldn't thrash around.

"Everything is fine, calm down, Yumi."

With those words a soft sensation wrapped around me. It appeared that Karen hugged me to calm me down. I tried to hold back from moving as much as I could because I didn't want to hurt her by accident. I was still twitching and tears gathered in my eyes, but after a minute or so, I already felt better. With some sobbing sounds, I patted her shoulders, telling her to let me go.

Karen released me from her hug and looked at me with worried eyes. I was sure I looked like a sobbing mess, but it hurt really bad after all.

"Everything okay now?"

"Nn."

I worryingly touched my face to confirm everything was okay, but it was only a bit hot and stung a bit, nothing else. Except for all the snot and tears.

Karen took the fire stone that I dropped at some point and lightened a few twigs. I didn't twitch when I saw the stone reacting to her mana, really!

Then she took a few twigs that were burning and turned towards me with a slightly worried smile.

"Come, you should wash your face."

"Nn..."

I followed her and sat down at the river to wash my face. Sudden exhaustion came over me and I would have nearly fallen into the river if Karen didn't catch me from behind.

"Be careful there."

"Nn... sorry."

"You have become really meek all of a sudden, haven't you..."

What else did you expect? I just exploded a stone into my face and was comforted by a girl younger than me, as if I was a little kid that scraped its knee. I had to admit it felt really comfortable in her embrace though. Was this the power of an older sister?

In any case, I didn't have the strength left to complain much right now.

We went back to the campfire, that now gave small crackling sounds and a small dim light, and sat down. I was sure Karen was trying to say something to me but I couldn't make it out anymore, and then everything went dark. 

I felt something warm and soft on my cheek. It was really an incredibly comfortable sensation. I was sure, this must have been heaven. I died for real this time and have ascended to heaven. This time I had to make sure I wouldn't wish for something overly simple. I still wanted to be a girl again, though. With that decided, it was time to take action!

"God, please reincarnate me as a cute girl!"

Wait, isn't this the same wish I made last time? Oh well, whatever.

"What, you want to be even cuter than now? You sure are greedy..." a familiar sounding voice replied.

"I'm fine being greedy, as long as I'm a cute girl it's all good."

"Somehow, that is pissing me off."

Something pinched my cheek. It hurt!

Wait, if I'm in heaven why does it hurt?

Opening my eyes a campfire entered my sight. It was unnaturally tilted to the side in a slightly under 90° angle though. Actually, the entire ground was tilted.

"You finally woke up?"

A tired voice came from my side, correction, from above me. I tried processing the current situation. When I was in an unsightly state I lost consciousness. And now I woke up with something warm, soft and really comfortable below my head and Karens voice above.

This must be it, a lap pillow by a beautiful girl! With a smile full of happiness I turned my head slightly upwards and...

"..."

"Hey, why do you look so disappointed the moment you saw me."

"No, it's just... you kind of destroyed a dream of mine..."

"With my face? That is quite rude, Yumi."

"No, not quite... I am happy about the lap pillow but you know... I kinda expected the lap pillow by a beautiful girl and..."

"You are becoming really rude, should I throw you into the fire?"

"PLEASE DON'T!"

Everything but that. I had enough fire for the foreseeable future.

"So? You are saying I am not a beautiful girl? Aren't you?"

Karen's voice became quite cold.

"No, rather than saying you are not beautiful it's more like... I can't tell."

"Can't tell?"

"The only beautiful things I can see are your eyes, the rest is hidden behind the dirt and I thought 'Oh right, if only she would clean up herself, this would indeed be a lap pillow by a cute girl' and so..."

"..."

Karen's eyes went wide but she kept silently staring at me, not averting her gaze in the slightest.

"Karen? You heard me?"

"... You are quite sly aren't you..."

I was sly for telling her to clean herself up? I didn't quite understand that thought process, but it was unlikely that she was willing to explain that to me now. Something told me I definitely shouldn't ask.

With impeccable timing, I heard a growling sound. My stomach apparently wanted to indicate that it was at its limits.

"I'm hungry."

"Haa... I heard it..." answered Karen with a sigh at my complaint.

"If you are hungry, then hurry up and check the fishes... I still haven't eaten anything either, you know?"

Oops, I completely forgot that she needed me to sort out the fish.

Reluctantly parting from Karen's lap, I forced myself to sit up and stared at the pile of fish next to the campfire. It was night and here we were, sitting outside at a campfire, preparing our food. Well, the preparation actually came after I sorted them, but that was a minor detail.

It was time I got to work.

I crawled along the ground to the fish pile and sat down again. Grabbing one fish I inspected it for mana. There was barely a reaction and it seemed to have no crystal, so I put it to my left. Taking the next fish, I identified it as a monster and put it to my right. Like this, I continued sorting the fish, which thankfully took only around two minutes. After all was said and done, there were only around fifteen fishes.

Nine of these were monsters, five were normal animals and the last one was our previous valiant sacrifice somewhere behind me.

The fishes itself were in different sizes, the smallest one was small enough to fit in both my hands and the largest was around twice that size.

"Around a third are edible, huh..." murmured Karen behind me.

"We should at least grill all the ones that are edible."

"Nn, what do we do with the others?"

"You said you can eat them, right? Let's prepare a few of those as well. The more we can stretch, the better. Also, we should take out their mana crystals."

"Nn... What actually happens when I absorb them?"

"Why are you asking me? Shouldn't you know that?"

Even if you asked me that, I just did it without any actual reason. It wasn't like there was a convenient voice in heaven that told me all these things.

"Well, all I can say are assumptions, do you still want to hear them?"

"Nn."

"Mhm... I heard some monsters are able to grow and evolve, albeit rarely. It wouldn't be surprising if that would require them to absorb other monsters' mana crystals, right? It might increase your total mana capacity or make you physically stronger, who knows?"

I might be able to grow stronger by absorbing mana crystals, was it. That would be great.

But I saw Karen fidgeting around as if she didn't want to continue.

"Is there more?"

"Well..."

Her eyes wandered towards the fire stone.

"I'm not going to touch that thing again anytime soon."

"Ah, that is not what I wanted to say, it is more like... you just collapsed, right?" she said, returning her gaze to me.

"Yeah, why was that anyway?"

"I guess it was mana deficiency."

"Mana deficiency? What's that?"

"It basically refers to the state when someone overuses their mana while casting spells. It is similar to severe exhaustion and it is not rare for people to collapse at that point."

"So that stone consumed so much mana that I collapsed? Considering how much it hurt it must've been quite a lot."

"..."

Karen kept silent and averted her eyes. That looked suspicious. Something was wrong.

"Yumi, elemental stones like the fire stone... They are made for common people. People who have next to no mana and the output of the stone itself is really low as well, it can't contain a lot of mana. As you saw, you can hurt yourself with it if you overcharge it, but even so, the mana required for that is next to nothing."

"..."

That couldn't be.

"Karen, are you saying, I have even less mana than a normal human?"

"... Yes."

When I came here, sensed mana for the first time and heard of magic in this world, I was exhilarated at the possibility of being able to cast magic. And now I was told I might never be able to cast magic. But wait, what did that have to do with the fish?

"Ah! But I was really surprised at the exploding stone, Yumi. Channelling that much mana into a fire stone is pretty hard, you know!"

"Please don't comfort me right now... Rather, tell me why the fish is important for that."

"Uhm... Well... Even the weakest monsters, you know, have more mana than an average human. And you absorbed the mana crystal but still collapsed so..."

In other words, either my capacity didn't increase at all, or the ratio it increased at was horrendous. When it pours, it rains.

What's up with this impossible game. Except it isn't a game but reality.

That was it, this day was without a doubt one of the worst, saved only by Karen's hug and her lap pillow.

"Let's make food."

I escaped reality.

"... Yes, let us start making food. Ah, but we should still get the mana crystals, maybe it just takes time for an effect to appear?"

"... Nn... Let's do that."

Maybe I should start calling Karen Big Sis. She's probably younger than me, but like this, no way I'd qualify as the older one...

I can't do anything and she looks out for me all the time. I'm quite useless, aren't I?

And with that decision made, I started to treat Karen as my older sister. At least, in my mind, for now. An additional reason to save her little sister, as we would be fellow little sisters!

I still wanted to ask her later or tomorrow if I could call her 'Sis'.

...

Speaking of which, we still hadn't talked about that. 

Thirty minutes later, the moon and the stars were shining brightly, while four fishes impaled on the spears were being grilled to perfection. Maybe not to perfection but I was so hungry, everything would be perfect. Despite that, Karen was surprisingly obstinate at preparing the fish properly, cutting it up and removing the guts.

The first few attempts were quite a mess but thanks to my suggestion to start first with the monster fishes to get used to it, we didn't waste any of the edible ones. Or rather the ones Karen can eat.

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We sacrificed 6 monster fish for the greater good. At least the mana crystals were undamaged. We decided to grill two of each kind of fish for now.

Karen was visibly in a good mood.

"Is it that great, to eat fish?"

"I told you before already, but you cannot eat fish without a magician. That means, unless you live in a fishing village it is nearly impossible to eat any fish unless you are rich and can employ a magician for this!"

So it was like a delicacy. That was kind of surprising, considering how common fish was in my former world.

Why the heck do the monster fishes look like normal fish anyway?

With the crackling sounds of the fire as background music, we waited patiently for the fishes to be done with grilling. One minute became two minutes and two minutes became three minutes, and so on.

"It should be done now, shouldn't it?" asked Karin with sparkles in her eyes. You were looking forward to it a lot, right.

"I think they should be good now."

Taking the spear with the fish I closely inspected the grilled fish. It looked good to me.

Karen similarly took the spear with her fish.

"Then, let's eat!"

"Nn!"

To sum it up: It was delicious! By far the best I've eaten since coming to this world. Karen similarly shared my opinion and was eating greedily. It took us barely any time until we finished both of our fishes and started grilling the next ones. Since there was only one monster fish left I got one normal fish as well this time. Sitting in front of the fire we waited, visibly in a great mood. Not only did we manage to find a food source, but it was also quite delicious.

"We should take the time to continue our previous discussion..." suggested Karen with a serious tone.

"Nn, we probably should. You wanted to tell me, why did you suspect I was a monster."

This was the thing that bothered me the most. I wasn't good at hiding things but it should have been so absurd a thought that nobody would entertain it. Karen herself told me that there were no intelligent monsters, after all.

"For that, I'd have to begin with my little sister's and my story. We came from a different country, or rather, we were exiled, nine years ago."

"Exiled?"

"Yes, I was only 8 at the time, my little sister only 7. That country is north from here, the demonkin country."

"The demonkin country? Karen, are you a demonkin?"

"... Yes. Not only just a demonkin but also a manakin..."

There was it again.

"What is a manakin?"

"Yumi... you don't know? Well, that explains why you are so careless, I guess."

Did that have anything to do with me? I tilted my head and thought about it, but I couldn't see the connection.

"Manakin are, in a way, something between a living being and a magical being. Manakin are those living beings, that at some point during their birth took in a large amount of natural mana. That causes part of their body to become highly contaminated with mana. That mana then attunes to an element and calms down."

"But didn't you say that high amounts of mana are dangerous for a living being?"

"Attuned mana is like the mana contained in a spell and not harmful for a living creature, it actually is highly beneficial instead. Manakin generally show higher lifespans, more talent with the magic of the attuned element and sometimes even special abilities. The degree of the initial contamination decides how strong these changes are."

"That doesn't sound all that bad, so what is the actual problem?"

"Usually there isn't a big problem but..."

Karen's eyes were fixated on me, or rather slightly to my side. I followed her gaze but I didn't see anything in particular there. I saw my hair was lying on the ground though, I should wash it tomorrow properly.

"Your hair, Yumi."

"My hair? Ah, yes, I should wash it tomorrow, there's quite some dirt on it."

"Not that, the colour."

"The colour?"

The soft pink was quite unusual even in this world but I did a few others with weird coloured hair.

"Common traits of manakin are the uniquely coloured hair and eyes."

"Huh, wait do you mean."

"Yes, you are most likely also a manakin."

So that was it. The colour was cute and nice, so I thought that was just because of my wish back then. To think there was such a reason.

"The colour usually shows the kind of attribute the mana is attuned to. As you probably guessed, in my case it is silver. Both my hair and my eyes have that colour."

"Is that why you hide your hair?"

"Yes, when people know you are a manakin it can become quite troublesome. Either they discriminate against you or they try to make use of you. I would really prefer if I could use coal instead of having to use dirt and mud and having it dry, it is really uncomfortable and it often breaks off and reveals what is beneath."

Karen grabbed some of her hair behind her and started rubbing it between her fingers. After a few second the spot revealed a shiny glitter in the light from the fire.

"It doesn't help that it really draws attention."

"It's a nice colour, I'd really like to see you cleaned up."

"... Well, I'll think about that tomorrow."

Did that mean I might see her cute appearance tomorrow? I definitely had to convince her. I wanted to see!

"In any case, my little sister has the same colour, it's a bit duller for her, but you barely notice it."

"You mentioned the attributes a few times already, but what exactly do you mean with that."

"The attributes we are strong at. As you know magic consists of countless attributes and there's nearly always at least one related to anything there is. Due to relations between the attributes a manakin usually has a main attribute with up to two minor attributes related to it. In my case, the silver colour relates to the Silver Moon as well as Iron and Diamond"

I didn't know there were countless attributes, but I kept silent for now.

"That doesn't exactly feel like they are really related."

"Well, for the relations it is apparently a big mystery why they relate to each other, but even if you asked me the details, I don't know. They do relate to mainly metals and minerals though for my case, so that is a kind of relation."

"What does Silver Moon mean in this case if it's related to metal?"

"It is from a legend about the Silver Moon that gave it the name, mentioning a legendary metal. I do not know much about metals, so that is all I can say in regards to that, but the various kinds of Moonmetal that the Silver Moon magic produces are widely popular and used nearly everywhere. Even the city gate is made of it. But it uses Iron and Coal for the magic, so I don't know why Diamond is related to it."

I held my head. Of course, the civilisation was quite advanced but they didn't understand everything yet. In fact, it seemed they understood less from the way physics and chemistry among others worked than they should at this point, because of the existence of magic. Magic solved their problems and they tried to solve everything with magic too. Instead of the natural workings, they tried to figure out how magic could produce the result they wanted.

And this caused the current situation.

"Karen... the metal you mean, that's called Steel."

"Stee... Steel?"

"Yes, Steel. It is an alloy created with Iron and Coal. I don't know the specifics either in how to make it, but those are the major components to the various types of steel. You can, in fact, create it without any magic at all."

"Without magic? Really?"

Karen stared wide-eyed at me. It must've been quite the revelation to her, that a magic metal was not as magical as she thought.

"But Coal is still not a diamond, so how does that come in there?"

"You're wrong, Coal and Diamond are actually the same."

"... You need a better joke to convince me of that."

Oh geez, I had no idea how to explain that to her.

"Uhm, basically, everything consists of extremely small parts, actually those parts consist of even smaller parts but that's not important. And Coal and Diamonds use the same small parts, the difference is in their structure. Coal wastes a huge amount of space while Diamond is very tight together. If you would compress a piece of coal you would get a really tiny piece of Diamond. You would have to compress with a real lot of power though."

"Hmm... Well, it would explain why they are related, so I'll believe you for now."

If you wanted to really name her attributes properly, it would be Steel, Iron and Carbon, but I shouldn't mention that now.

"In any case, we got sidetracked again. I will ask you later more about those things and how you know about that."

"Please have mercy..."

"You reap what you sow."

That was probably true. I also could've just kept quiet, after all.

"Anyway, you say the colour is related to the attributes, in that case, what would it be for me?"

"For you... A soft pink..."

Karen went red, at least it seemed like she did, and averted her gaze. After coughing twice she faced me again. I had a bad feeling about this.

"Well,... Soft and mellow pink is usually attributed to life, the soul and..."

She stopped. Life and Soul, huh? They did sound like something that related to each other but whatever could the last one be, that Karen had trouble with it?

It took her a few more seconds until she found some courage to tell me.

"It is... Well... Life, the Soul and... Lust...."

Lust. Yeah... Of course, it had to be that one. I was a tentacle monster after all so whatever else could it have been. It also made sense, after all, Lust pretty much was a synonym to creating a new life, and therefore also a new soul. It wasn't surprising at all, most likely Lust was the main attribute in this case too, right?

"But that's just my assumption, it could be something completely different, too."

No, you were surely right with that. It fit too well. I let out a deep sigh, facing the sky. The stars and the moon were beautiful.

"Give me a minute."

"Okay..."

Had to process this first. In the meantime, Karen took the fishes away from the fire so they wouldn't end up burnt. She handed me mine and then started eating her own. We each finished our respective fish and I urged Karen to continue with her explanations.

"So, I think that was enough about manakin for now? We should probably wrap up our talk before it gets too late."

"Yeah, we should do that. You wanted to explain why you were exiled if I recall it right?"

"Yes, we stopped there. Well, the remaining part is rather simple. Demonkin literally worship magic, they are proficient in magic, and many manakin are born among them, being praised as the ultimate magicians."

"That's not sounding much like a reason to be exiled."

"It's only for normal cases like that, in our cases, the problem was our attributes. Mana related to metals barely has any actual influence on magic, there are some spells but most of it is a form of body strengthening or combining metals with magic to create new ones. Simply said, those attributes are looked down upon by the demonkin, even going as far as calling us, the cursed children. I don't really have many good memories of our time in that country."

Discrimination because of differences in abilities, was it. Even in Earth's history, those occurrences were far from rare. In fact, they were incredibly common, and even in modern times, discrimination persisted in various forms, from intentional to unintentional. But it was still better than in the centuries prior to the modern age. Being discriminated against could mean death in those times. Exile was probably a rather lenient solution, even though for the exiled themselves it wasn't pleasant either way. If you were discriminated against in one place, it wasn't surprising to be discriminated against in your new place either. No wonder that Karen hid her hair and always wore a hood all outside.

"Well, after our exile, we travelled somehow to this country. It was kind of a miracle that we survived the way. Thanks to our attributes we had great physical strength, so we somehow managed in the wilderness. It was incredibly hard though. At some point, we reached this city, Arkesta. And then everything went wrong..."

Karen stopped, she probably had to collect herself first, for the next part. That I finally found out the city's name after an entire week wasn't that important now. Nor that I confirmed that Karen was, in fact, a superhuman after all.

"When we arrived, everything was still okay. Of course, we had no way to get past the city gates, but we thought we could easily make do in the slums. They couldn't be worse than the wild monsters after all. We were so sure, that we didn't pay much attention to our surroundings. We learned the hard way that humans can be a lot scarier than a wild monster.

On our first day, we were approached by suspicious men. Figuring we could just ignore them, we walked past them without reacting. But an 8-year-old and a 7-year-old, they didn't have much of a way against a group of adults. They attacked us and then they took me and my sister with them. At their base, they decided what to do with us. I was to work for them, in exchange for our 'safety'. And my sister, they made her into a guinea pig for their experiments..."

"... Experiments? Human experimentation...."

I was shocked.

"It was about monster research. What do you think is the most attractive trait of a monster for humans?"

"Attractive trait? I don't know, growing stronger by absorbing mana crystals?"

"Not quite. That is also a good point, but the most attractive one is their effectively infinite lifespan, their high survivability even after a fatal wound, as well as being immune to nearly all diseases."

"The search for immortality is it."

"Exactly."

Immortality. Eternal Youth. All those things were searched for since time immemorial. And most likely they would never stop their search either. Especially not in this world, where it may very well be a reachable possibility.

"It has been nine years since then, I tried many things to make them release my sister, but nothing. They are too obsessed with it. That's why I was searching for a substitute..."

"And then I conveniently came along, with attributes related to life and souls, which may be relevant for that research, right?"

"Despite being so airheaded, you are surprisingly sharp at times like this. You are right, I intended to give you to them in exchange for my sister. I'm sorry."

Let us ignore that rude comment about being an airhead, shall we? I'm not an airhead.

"It's fine, I can't say I'm happy with it, but you wanted to save your sister, right? But let me guess, the negotiations broke down and now they are after both of us?"

"... Yes. They asked why they should release her, the subjects would just increase by one and that was it."

Karen looked like a convicted in front of the judge, fully aware of her sins. All the guilty feelings seemed to pour out of her right now.

"Well, so much to that, huh. Were they after the old men distributing food to flush us out?"

"It's not just them. Everyone who contributed food in any way outside of their control was dealt with. There was nobody left. They either were threatened or they... disappeared."

So they were dead. They must have really wanted me in that case. But a group of thugs researching immortality? There was no way that would work, they most likely had someone backing them, in which case this was probably even more troublesome. We should maybe assume that being caught by the guards would send us straight into their hands as well. Someone with that much influence surely had their fingers in the local militia as well.

"Well, that least makes it clear who the enemy is. We just have to kick their asses, right?"

"... Yumi, it's not quite that simple, you know. We have no combat ability, no connections, and yet we are up against an organized group."

"Doesn't sound much different from before, just, now we have another objective outside of just surviving against them."

"I wish I was as carefree as you..."

I wasn't carefree in the least. I was scared shitless. That sounded like an impossible game, the hardest difficulty on hardcore mode. Only one try. No way in this was carefree, but I agreed to help her, and in any case, they were after me already anyway. I could complain as much as I wanted, but that wouldn't change the situation.

I took my last fish and started eating, but stopped after taking a single bite.

"Karen, is this the normal one?"

"Huh? Uh, I think so."

"It tastes only half as good as the monster fishes."

"Yumi..."

It seemed that monster meat was quite delicious for me. Not only did it save us from wasting good meat, but it was even good meat, from my perspective at least. Karen gave me a wry smile and started eating her last fish as well.

We would continue the next day with this. But now, we should end this night.

We finished eating up and extinguished the fire, save for one twig that should work as a torch. A single twig wouldn't last long but the small cave in the rock wasn't far either.

When we arrived the flame went out by itself already, and with the dim moonlight we laid down. There wasn't much space, but the warmth was quite comforting right now.

"Yumi?"

"Yes?"

"May I... hold you while we sleep?"

That was a surprising question, but Karen probably had a lot of emotions welling up right now.

"Nn, please do."

To be honest, I would like that comforting warmth right now as well.

Karen wrapped her arms around me and we snuggled up to each other.

"Good Night, Yumi."

"Good Night, Sis."

"Eh?"

I felt my face becoming slightly red, so I buried it in her chest.

"You really are, after all, sly and unfair."

I felt her embrace tightening.

Tonight was a very comfortable night and we slept deep and soundly, in this silent night, devoid of anything but us.

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